According to WENN, one of the images from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed Hogwarts in tatters after a battle between the boy wizard and his enemy, Lord Voldemort. Another showed Potter's home on Privet Drive looking, according to the actor and TV presenter, "a little overgrown".

Fry posted the pictures online on Thursday. He was in a position to take them because he is currently filming his role as Mycroft, Sherlock Holmes's elder brother, in Guy Ritchie's forthcoming follow-up to last year's Hollywood take on the famous sleuth, which is being filmed close to the Potter set at Leavesden studios in Hertfordshire.

The photographs later disappeared and Fry tweeted: "Ooops. I've been sent to the naughty step ..." When one follower asked if executives at Potter studio Warner Bros had got involved, he replied: "Your words, not mine ..."